China Dolls

by Lisa See

  And then there was Ida. She had loads of admirers, but she always saved time for Ray Boiler, the creepy short-order cook from Visalia who used to follow Ruby around. Even though Ruby had warned Ida about him, she saw him anyway. I guess she thought she was one-upping Ruby. Since Ida was more receptive to Ray’s attentions, he gave her bracelets and earrings. He bought her scarves and hats. He brought her sugar and other rationed foodstuffs stolen from the coffee shop where he worked. When she sat with him between shows, he slipped her fifty-dollar tips. Whenever she dared to treat Ray like dirt, or brazenly dance with one soldier boy after another in front of him, he’d go nearly crazy with desire and jealousy, which caused him to fixate on her all the more. She was playing a dangerous game, and she liked it.

  Finally it came time for me to get my feet wet. Almost a year to the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, this boy in uniform came to the club. He was a woesome thing, trying to act courageous, on his way to the Pacific. I felt sorry for the kid. We drank beer. We danced to “On a Little Street in Singapore.”

  “Where you from, soldier?”

  “You wouldn’t know it,” he said.

  He swung me under his arm. His jitterbug was awkward, and I had to be nimble to keep him from crushing my feet.

  “Try me.”

  “I’m from Darbydale, Ohio.”

  “Darbydale!” I exclaimed. “That’s close to where I grew up. I’m from Plain City.”

  His parents were farmers. He and his family had gone to the Plain City Fair for as long as he could remember, although he didn’t recall seeing me win a dance contest.

  “I never went to that part of the fair,” he admitted bashfully. “I was 4-H all the way.”

  We drank a few more beers and danced a few more times. He clapped and smiled during my numbers. He reminded me of home when the world was conspiring to make me yearn—longingly and unrealistically—for the consolation and security of the town where I’d grown up. I got caught up in the moment so many ponies had before me with the soldier boys who came to the club before shipping out and might never come back. I took him to my apartment after the last show. Jeremy Scott was his name, and I was twenty-one years old. I wish I could say it was a big deal, but it was the first time for both of us, and it wasn’t anything to rave about. Grope. Poke. Bump. Grunt. Sigh. It hurt like the dickens, and it was over so fast I was flummoxed. That’s it? I’ve been pining and worrying and saving myself for this? He slouched out of my apartment at five in the morning. He promised to write, but he never did. For all I know, he got killed in his first firefight. Very sad if true. But from the moment he left I was scared down to my toes. What if I was pregnant? I looked for symptoms everywhere. Did the smell of food turn my stomach? Was I sleepy? Did my breasts hurt? The girls at the club peppered me with advice.

  “Try douching with olive oil,” Ida recommended. “That’s what I do when Ray comes to town.”

  “I prefer Coca-Cola,” Irene said. “It’s fizzy, and Jack doesn’t mind the taste.”

  The idea made my head swim, but the other girls laughed.

  “You could try spreading pomegranate pulp down there,” someone else suggested.

  “Or fresh ginger.”

  “Or tobacco juice.”

  “You’re making me sick,” I said.

  The girls stared at me sympathetically. Ida voiced what they were thinking. “That probably means you’re knocked up for sure.”

  Which made my eyes go black with dizziness.

  “If you are knocked up,” Ruby said, “none of those things is going to help you. They’re only good if you use them before you do it.”

  “A friend of mine has a trampoline,” one of the girls suggested helpfully. “I heard that if you jump a lot, the baby will come loose.”

  “You could throw yourself down some stairs—”

  Ida said, “I know a man who can take care of it—”

  “Stop, all of you,” Helen ordered. “You’re frightening her half to death.”

  Literally, because death from exsanguination or sepsis was what I was looking at if I got a back-alley abortion. My father had accused me of being a whore, and now I burned with shame and fear. All this from a few minutes with some kid …

  “I’ll help you,” Helen vowed. And she did, although I probably shouldn’t have put my faith in her when she herself had gotten pregnant and ended up with Tommy. Helen put me in a bathtub with steaming hot water. She sat on the floor and kept me company while I massaged my stomach and prayed for whatever was in there to come out. About a week later, while I was dancing the Chinaconga through the club, something warm and sticky leaked between my legs. My period had arrived … right on schedule.

  “You were lucky this time,” Helen lectured. “You and only you will have to suffer any mistakes you make in connection with one of our boys.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” I promised. “I’m never going to do it again.”

  Helen took me to a doctor anyway. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  The doctor—as white as his coat, but not nearly as judgmental as I expected him to be—fitted me with a diaphragm. When he was done rummaging around in there, he said, “This isn’t all up to you. Our boys have seen films and they’ve all learned the slogan: Don’t forget—put it on before you put it in.”

  As crude as what he said was, at least now I was prepared. And even though I’d vowed never to do it again, over the next few months I sometimes got caught up, once again, in the moment. Making love got a lot better too. Fun! I wasn’t the only one to see it that way. Young women, whether at our club or working as waitresses near munitions factories or in bars outside bases, came to be called Victory Girls, although some people dubbed us Khaki-wackies, Cuddle Bunnies, and Good-time Charlottes. We were doing our part for the war effort—even if that meant we had to deal with a lot of busy hands. And when the boys shipped out, we presented them with signed photographs—“Dreaming of you, forever yours, Princess Tai,” “To a swell guy, love always, Grace,” or “May you stay as sweet as you are, love and kisses, Ida”—so they’d have something to hold when they got lonely. We gave them our address at the club so they could write to us, and many of them did—sad, homesick notes. Sometimes we never heard from them again, and we wondered if they were dead, injured, or had just forgotten us. But the next day, a new batch of boys would come through, and the cycle would start over. I didn’t get pregnant, and no one got too rough. (That doesn’t mean I didn’t count the days each month, though. One mistake would destroy my life.)

  As for Ruby, she’d gone fourteen months without being identified, and either her fears had vanished or she did a great job of hiding them, because Princess Tai was the most popular of all the girls. The ponies complained that her gardenias intoxicated the men in the audience. And they did seem intoxicated, but it wasn’t from her gardenias. You should have seen the way they leaned forward in their chairs, waiting for Princess Tai to drop her fans or her bubble. She never did. They bought her dinner and drinks. They sent flowers to the dressing room. She showed the youngest ones how to dance. She taught them how to use chopsticks. When some smart mouth would tease her with the old myth about which direction an Oriental girl’s privates went, she’d laugh merrily. “Oh, sweetie, you should try it. It’s just like eating corn on the cob.”

  One night at the beginning of March ’43—a full year after Joe went to Southern California for training—a wiseacre in dress blues popped Ruby’s bubble with the tip of his cigarette. People went crazy! After that, Ruby deliberately stayed in the middle of the dance floor, sashaying only once a night close enough to some lucky boy, who’d paid to have the honor of popping her bubble. “It’s all in good fun,” Ruby always said after she’d scampered Eve-style back to the dressing room. The new showstopper made Charlie happy too, because he could put an inflated price for the bubble on the patron’s check.

  Through it all, Ruby remained true to Joe, but the more risks she took and the more daring and flamboya
nt she became, the more I lay awake at night, anxious that one slip and it would be all over for her.

  GRACE

  A Succulent Dish

  “Cripes! Get a load of this!” Ruby beamed as she held a telegram out to me. “It’s an offer to be in a movie!”

  I read the telegram inviting Princess Tai to dance in a Paramount Studios film called Aloha, Boys!, starring Deanna Durbin, with music by Kay Kyser, who’d recently had a big hit with “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” These were not top-top stars, but the ponies in the dressing room flipped their lids. It hadn’t even been four weeks since that guy first popped Ruby’s bubble and already she was reaping big dividends.

  “It’s beyond exciting!” Ida said.

  “Stupendous!” Irene whinnied.

  “Can I take your place while you’re gone?” asked Esther, a new girl, who, it now became apparent, had bigger ambitions than any of us realized. “I’ve been working on a routine.”

  Ida jabbed Esther with her elbow. “Stop it already. We’ve all heard about your girl-in-a-gilded-cage act. Charlie doesn’t want it. This is about Ruby, not about you trying to steal her spot in the show.”

  Ruby and I left the gals to their arguing and went to Charlie’s office so she could call the casting director. She held the phone to her ear and repeated pieces of the conversation so I could hear. She’d be required on the Paramount lot for a day, but with train travel and time for her to relax before and after filming, she’d be gone for five. As I listened, I grew angry with myself. I’d become lazy. I’d forgotten ambition. I’d let Ruby jump far ahead of me, because it was easy to float through as a pony, earning $150 a week with my extra powdering-and-gluing job and living on the edges of her bounty.

  By the time she got off the phone, Charlie had opened champagne and was pouring it for everyone—from the lowliest dishwasher all the way up to his prized princess. “I promise a raise to anyone else who gets a part in a film,” he proclaimed as he lifted his glass.

  “I’d kill to be in your place, Ruby,” I confessed, truthful as can be.

  She flushed with joy as she announced, “They told me I can bring someone with me. You and Helen are closest to me. I wish I could bring you both.”

  I’d sat through enough of Reverend Reynolds’s sermons back home to recognize that the greed and covetousness raging through my body were sins.

  “I can’t go. I’ve got Tommy,” Helen said, giving me the best gift of my life.

  I hugged Ruby and thanked Helen. I was grateful and ecstatic. Then something occurred.

  “Isn’t this trip dangerous?” I asked when we were alone. “What if you’re caught?”

  “Give it a rest, will ya?” Ruby snapped.

  After that, I kept my mouth shut.

  Ruby and I needed clothes for the trip, so we went out and spent a fortune. We bought outfits in wool, cotton, and rayon, because those fabrics were produced in America. Not only had the amount and types of fabric been dramatically cut to help the war effort, but the range in colors had also been reduced, since the chemicals used for dyes had shifted to military purposes. What hues remained had all-American names: Victory Gold, Gallant Blue, Valor Red, and Patriot Green. My favorite skirt had a pattern of Vs done in Morse code—three dots and a single dash—to symbolize V for victory. We splurged and used our entire ration of three pairs of shoes for the year in one day.

  Joe was to be the cherry on top. He’d finished half of his training and had managed to swing a couple days off to meet us. When Ruby asked the production folks if Joe could come to the set, they agreed, saying, “Anything for our boys.”

  Charlie arranged for newspaper photographers to see us off, so Ruby and I planned our travel ensembles accordingly. We were entertainers; we needed to appear alluring yet approachable. Ruby wore a knee-length skirt, a twin set, and a pair of wedges. I wore a ruffled blouse and a cotton dirndl skirt printed in a red, white, and blue pattern, and red canvas platforms with brass studs. We painted our nails with Cutex’s Alert varnish and applied Elizabeth Arden Velva Leg Film to our legs to give us the appearance of wearing stockings, even though the cream stained the insides of our skirts an awful yellow. We used eyebrow pencil to draw lines up the backs of our legs for seams.

  A car and driver met us at Union Station in Los Angeles, and we were sped west along Sunset Boulevard. We made the jog over to Hollywood Boulevard and arrived at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel like we were real movie stars. (Big change since the last time I was here!) Once we got to our suite, we dressed for a night on the town: Ruby in a black crepe gown and a black snood (like Hedy Lamarr), I in a royal-blue crepe gown shirred at the waist with my seal fur thrown over my shoulders. We both used Tussy Jeep Red lipstick—“Lovely as a Jeep; attention-getting as a Major.” When the front desk called to notify us that Joe had arrived, we primped for a few more minutes, then rode the elevator to the lobby.

  Joe wore his uniform, and he sure looked good. A cool sip of water. A man with the world by the tail. He grinned as he strode toward us. He stopped just before Ruby so he could give her the full head-to-toe. “You’re a succulent dish, baby,” he said, and she was.

  He took us to the Coconut Grove. Princess Tai was a very big fish in the minuscule pond of San Francisco Chinatown and a pretty big fish in the moderately sized wartime pond of the San Francisco nightclub scene, but even here—at the apex of glamour and class—she turned heads. She wasn’t a movie star yet, so we were seated on the first tier above the dance floor. “Second-best seats in the joint,” Joe pronounced as he happily surveyed the room.

  He was besotted with Ruby, and she was thrilled to see him too. The way they had their hands on each other, I bet they wished they could whisk off to someplace private, but I was there and they did their best to include me. He danced with each of us, and, as usual, other couples made room for Joe and me as we swung through some of our special moves. When we returned to Ruby, he topped off our champagne glasses and told us what was coming next for him in training. Ruby and I plastered interested expressions on our faces, but what in the heck was he talking about? He had us back at the hotel by midnight. Ruby needed to be rested for her big day, but Joe came in for a while and they spent some time alone in her room. I put up my hair in curlers and tried not to listen.

  The next morning, Ruby kept her face clean of makeup, as she’d been told to do, but I dolled up. I was going to a movie studio; I wanted to look fabulous. I swept up the front and sides of my hair to form a waved pompadour, using a foam doughnut to increase the volume.

  Joe was waiting with the studio car when we got downstairs. He put a hand on the small of Ruby’s back as he helped her into the backseat. It was a short drive to Paramount Studios. A tall blond woman carrying a clipboard greeted us. Her name was Betty, and she managed to come across as both authoritative and stunning. “The director wants to meet you before you go to Hair and Makeup,” she explained. She ushered us through the soundstage—cavernous and dark, with a sensuously lit set of a nightclub built in the center—where David Butler was going over blocking details. Famous! He’d directed a few Shirley Temple movies and had just wrapped Road to Morocco. He shook hands with Joe, nodded to me, and eyeballed Ruby as though he were checking the freshness of a fish.

  “I’ve heard great things about you.” He motioned for Ruby to turn so he could get the 360-degree view. “I haven’t seen your act, so can you show me both dances—the one with the bubble and the one with the feathers?”

  “They’re fans,” Ruby corrected him.

  He gave her a wink, pleased with her spunk.

  “How much of me is going to show?” she asked, her rotation complete.

  “How much can I get?” he asked mischievously.

  Ruby tipped a finger at him. “You’re the one who has to deal with the decency codes, not me.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry about a thing. You’ll be plenty decent.”

  He asked Betty to escort us to Ruby’s dressing room. We went back o
utside and strolled down a path lined with perfectly cut box hedges. When Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman walked past us, I practically had to pinch myself. Ruby fluttered her eyelids at me, delighted. It felt like we’d arrived in heaven. Joe beamed too. He’d have plenty of stories to tell when he returned to Minter Field.

  The dressing room was small but elegant. Betty pointed to a carton that protected a pair of flawless gardenias for Ruby to wear. Then Betty whisked us to Hair and Makeup, and we watched as folks painted Ruby’s face and squeezed a wig over her head with hair that came down past her rear end.

  “They must be going for a Godiva look,” Ruby commented.

  Betty shrugged. Apparently no one had bothered to inform her.

  “We’ll have the body makeup girl take care of you in your dressing room,” Betty said. “Can you two make it back by yourselves? I’ve arranged for someone to take Joe on a tour of the studio.”

  Joe docilely allowed himself to be led away by Betty, and Ruby and I wandered back to her dressing room. A few minutes later, the makeup girl arrived, and I showed her how Ruby liked her powder applied. After the girl left, I helped Ruby into a silk robe and pinned the gardenias over her left ear. Then we stood—because Ruby didn’t want to smudge her makeup—and waited. Finally, we heard a knock at the door. I answered it to find Betty nervously scrutinizing her clipboard. Two men in dark suits with gray felt fedoras pulled low over their foreheads loomed behind her. Mr. Butler had tagged along too.

  “These men are from the FBI. They’re searching for …” Betty glanced at her clipboard then back at me. “They’re calling her Kimiko Fukutomi.”

  The men impatiently pushed Betty aside. One of them put his meaty palm on the door and shoved it open against my pathetic resistance. What did I think holding it closed would accomplish? That I’d give Ruby a chance to climb out the window in her robe? Where could she possibly have escaped to?